2 months later
"Updates?"
The Agent flinched. "N-no news, ma'am."
I clenched the pen in my hand tighter.
"Get out of my sight," I sighed.
The agent raced out of the office which I'd been occupying for the past two months. It was a royal mess. Maps, reports and paperwork littered the desk and the floor nearby.
He was nowhere to be found. An entire two month of sending out spies, hiring mercenaries and bounty hunters, and all came back with the same result. Dottore couldn't be located. He'd basically dropped off the face of the earth.
One month in, and a funeral was held. A funeral I didn't attend because I refused to believe it. His white ceremonial robes were gifted to me after the funeral yet I felt nothing. I remembered the first time we'd gone to visit the Tsaritsa so that he would enroll me in as Fatui; he wore this robe. I pushed the memory away.
Throughout the past weeks, people began to pity me. They would say that I was going through a 'depressive episode' and this was my way of coping with the grief of losing him. The palace residents couldn't seem to understand my attachment to the Fatui Harbinger but they were irrelevant to me. Mere disposable pawns in a bigger game. They couldn't even begin to reach the height of my achievements. Useless, every single one of them.
I left the office and started towards the training room that had become my second home. My fists clenched and unclenched tightly as I forced myself to keep my breathing in check. I was seething with rage almost all the time and it was blatantly obvious with the way passers by scrambled to move out of my way. It had been like this ever since I got back.
My whole being had changed entirely since returning. Once upon a time, I was the quiet assistant of a Harbinger who had picked up a few victories here and there but now... Well, I could hardly be recognised.
My reputation had soured to that of a rotten apple. Everyone I talked to received short tempered and stern treatment. The blood on my hands and the corpses under my name had reached a mortifying height. Throughout the month, any and every person that had seen or even heard of Dottore in Sumeru was taken in for questioning by me. They never came out of the interrogation room.
My underlings were growing tired of cleaning up the bodies and soon I'd slowly became the 4th Fatui Harbinger's replacement. It was almost as if he'd never left after I'd taken over his office.
The Tsaritsa had never called for me again and I was never asked to fulfill any duties in the lab after returning from Sumeru.
Nobody seemed to oppose my stepping up to the position. On more than one occasion, I was ordered to join the Harbingers for their meetings. It was terribly dull and I certainly had better things to do but I couldn't exactly skip it. I kept all of Dottore's affairs and appointments in check and the two months dragged by with no progress.
Night after night, I checked the orb on my ring for any change, any shift from the cloudy grey view. It was to no avail. Dottore was either dead or no longer in possession of the matching piece of the jewellery.
I spent tireless hours in the training room and the arena practicing my fighting abilities. It took me back to the days when I was a spy, where I honed my talents at sneaking around and strengthening my combat.
I was skilled with the bow thanks to help from Tartaglia who would agree to spar with me every so often. My eye for aiming was among the best within the Fatui sniper ranks and so I made use of it by making myself familiar with all the guns in our arsenal. Along the way, I'd picked up many new scars from the spars with the 11th Harbinger but they were meaningless to me. Everything was.
My mask never came off; nobody had seen my face for weeks. Beneath it hid an exhausted girl who had evidently lost weight and a part of her self along the way. The dark circles under my eyes made my gaze look dry and empty. My mood fluctuated constantly as everyone had picked up on but avoided commenting about. I'd gained the habit of biting my lip and picking at the skin so much that they were constantly bleeding and cut.
I'd completely fallen apart.
I know how much I'd spiralled out of control. My body could hardly take anymore training due to the little hours of sleep and small portions of food I'd consume in day. My mind was constantly trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together, coming up with theory after theory of where he might be. It was all I thought about. Along with the memories and moments Dottore and I shared.
Even those began to fade. It hurt to try to remember particular moments in our past only for them to be vague and lost. I missed him. I missed him so much it hurt.
As unhealthy as my life had become, I'd grown as a person. Nobody felt confident enough to approach me or talk to me for fear they would die at my hands. It shouldn't have felt so good but people stopped bothering me. I could think and work in peace, only occasionally having to ask for updates from people I'd appointed to work for me. The air of confidence I carried along with my new paired strengths was a warning sign to those that wanted to wrong me. I'd become the reason rooms fell silent upon my entry.
The weight I'd lost was replaced with muscle along with emotional weight that trailed behind me like a metal ball chained to my ankle. Even the Harbingers stopped commenting things about me or Dottore to my face. Whenever we passed one another, some ignored me whilst others nodded in respect. They really had begun to respect me in comparison to how they once viewed me as the stupid girl that had fallen for the Doctor.
Scaramouche had kept his promise, occasionally coming in to report to me things that none of the spies I'd sent out could retrieve. A rumour or a sighting, sometimes even a suspicious location that might hold some answers. Ultimately, it was all to no avail.
It was strange to me. He was supposed to have been kidnapped by the authorities however his wanted posters were still littered across the nation and my spies had informed me that he was still being searched for, especially after the charade in the black market. It became a huge news headline. We weren't explicitly mentioned but it was hinted that multiple factions including traces of the Fatui were discovered among the rubble.
So, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't the Academy that had taken Dottore from me. It was a different group of people. And when I found them, I would unleash wrath and torture like no other upon them. The gallons of blood lust that were stored up inside of me were screaming at me to be released. That is precisely why I was back at the palace's training facility.
I ditched the guns today and resorted to assaulting a punching bag hanging from the ceiling. Who knows how long I spent in there? All my aching sorrows and pathetic grieving emotions were tipped out when I was in here. This one room was designated to higher authority only and was often empty, meaning I could be free to show vulnerability.
Nobody understood what I was feeling. I was constantly battling the intrusive thoughts telling me he was dead and I was ashamed to admit that I was slowly inching towards believing it. Most people thought I was overreacting, that I was blowing it way out of proportion and that Dottore and I had only been together for over a month.
What they didn't understand is that his touch and his company had become a lifeline. Tears welled up in my eyes as I remembered waking up by his side and laughing with him when no one was looking. In such a short time, Dottore had made up for all the lack of love and affection in my life. I knew depending on him so much would end in heart break as I was experiencing now, but I couldn't help it. I was drunk on the feeling of being wanted and being seen for who I was. It made me feel alive. And that feeling was addicting.
Now... I was here, punching a leather bag as if it were his chest.
Why did you do that?
Why did you leave me?
Please... Just come back...
I hit the punching bag so hard my knuckles began to bleed. But I couldn't stop. The pain was welcome. I felt as if I deserved it for everything I'd done up to this point. It was nice feeling something other than grief and sorrow.
"Y/N, what are you doing?? Your hands are battered," said someone as they clamped a hand down onto my shoulder.
Instinctively, I sent an elbow into their stomach and kicked their legs out from beneath them within seconds.
Tartaglia lay on the floor beneath me with wide eyes filled with concern.
"Don't. Touch. Me."
"I'm sorry... I didn't mean to startle you..." He lifted his hands up in surrender as he watched me intently.
I sighed stepping back and keeping my gaze away from my hands that were dripping blood from various cuts. I'd gathered a whole collection of scars on them that joined the burns from my vision years ago. It no longer mattered to me.
"Y/N, why are you doing this to yourself? Do you think Dottore would be pleased to see what you've done?" He asked with genuine worry but the single mention of Dottore had my anger levels spiking.
"Don't pretend like you know what he would've been pleased with. Don't even mention him in my presence. Nothing I do should concern you Tartaglia. I know what I'm doing and I know my limits, so just leave me alone," I hissed.
Storming past him, I reached for the snipers commonly used by Pyro Gunslingers and headed for the target booths. Tartaglia followed in silence as if he still had more to say but was waiting for me to calm down.
"Didn't you hear me? I said, leave me alone. What more do you have to say to me? Spit it out."
"Its obvious to anyone that you've let yourself go. This isn't you. You're letting your anger and grief consume you and control you. Its putting your life in danger! Not to mention the fact that-"
BANG.
I successfully hit the moving target right in the centre. Tartaglia's words were unimportant. He didn't know me. Sure, he was a useful training partner and his worry for me was appreciated but I didn't need encouraging and poetic words. I needed the man I loved to return with my heart. Because as long as it wasn't with me, then no one could get through to me.
Scaramouche had questioned my methods and my health before too. He didn't show half as much concern but he still tried to convince me to slow down and look around me.
"So you're just going to ignore me, huh?"
Another bullseye. And another. And another. Bullet shells tinkled upon impact with the floor.
"What's the matter with you? How could one person who you knew for such a short amount of time lead you to fall into this pit of misery? If you could just see yourself from my point of view, you would realise how important it is for you to stop. He's gone, Y/N. Don't you think one of his clones would have stirred by now? Don't you think you would have gotten at least a snag of fabric that indicated he'd made it out of the explosion alive? Your digging yourself deeper and deeper into an endless hole-"
"SHUT UP," I snapped.
Grabbing the collar of Tartaglia's shirt and dropping the sniper in my hand, I summoned my own personal pistol into my hand and pointed it beneath his chin.
"You cannot even begin to understand me Tartaglia. Let me give you a little example of what I feel. Imagine you're little Teucer. You and him are playing around, having fun, building snowmen and having snowball fights. You turn your back for a second and he disappears. Where's he gone? You know he was there moments ago, right? He's probably just hiding. And so you look. You search and search and search and you know he's just playing a game with you but why can't you find him?" As I spoke I waved the gun around near his head and watched as the colour drained from his face. "Weeks go by, little Teucer doesn't seem to come out. And then one day, BAM."
I shot a bullet into the ceiling for impact.
"Oh look! Teucers back! But he's not Teucer anymore. Because his heart isn't beating anymore and his eyes are glazed over and skin is grey and sucked dry of life. Because his laughs don't exist anymore, his comforting and warm company doesn't exist anymore-"
"STOP," yelled Tartaglia as he shoved me away from him. "Just... Stop."
His voice broke as he ran a hand down his face and averted my gaze. His eyes were wide with panic, his fingers shook lightly.
"Don't ever let Teucer's name pass your lips again. Do you hear me?!" Tartaglia pushed past me, shoving hard against my shoulder. "Your disgusting Y/N. I can't fault you for becoming a heartless murderer, but your damn crazy. Don't come near me again."
"I hope you know what it feels like now. Dottore was as important to me as your family is to you. How would you feel if I told you they were all dead? You wouldn't take it so well either," I said calmly.
He never responded. His fisted hands and tense demeanor carried him out of the room; any remnants of concern for me torn down and burnt to ash.
I didn't mean to hurt him like that. It was his fault. He started it. I made it crystal clear that I wanted to be left alone and that he shouldn't interfere. It was a real shame that I probably just lost a good ally.
That did it for the day. I left the training room in a haste, eager to get out of such a humid atmosphere. On my way back I reached a staircase, where I paused when my eyes landed on the door to the lab at the end of the corridor.
I hadn't gone back in there for the longest time. It carried too many burdening memories. I would never leave if I entered now but something compelled me. I felt as if I had to go in there. Dottore and I had spent so much time in there together and after everything that happened this evening, I wanted to reminisce.
I trudged towards the entrance and pushed through the door. The lights had been switched off, giving the room an ominous vibe. Only my electro vision glowed in the box Dottore had left it in, the lid open.
I sighed. There was nothing left in here that would lighten my mood. Just as I turned to leave, my ears picked up on the tiniest, inconspicuous sound. I almost thought I hadn't heard it but pausing at the door, it sounded again. The noise was somewhat similar to a clicking.
Summoning a pistol into my hand, I sneaked through the lab following the source of the sound. Was someone in here? This place was explicitly for Dottore and me only. No one should be coming in here without permission. The idea that someone had broken in, pissed me off. I gritted my teeth and stopped at a door in the lab, I never thought to enter.
Dottore had told me it was a storage room of old things and it was dusty so it was best to avoid. Why would a sound becoming from inside? Maybe it was a rat?
I exhaled, before shoving the door open and pointing my gun up protectively.
I sucked in a breath. What was this place? This isn't a storage room... This is...
My eyes scanned my surroundings as the clicking and whirring noise continued to sound in the spacious room.
I couldn't believe my eyes. Multiple tubular vessels containing bodies in a blue liquid lined the walls in rows. Every body resembled Dottore. These were... His clones. Every single one of them. They all had their eyes shut and floated unconsciously in the strange liquid. Walking past each one, I stopped to study the faces.
Suddenly my mood soured at his familiar face. Most of them seemed to be unfinished and unused in perfect condition. The odd one or two looked damaged or hurt.
My eyes snapped to a desk at the end of the room where the clicking sound was coming from. Approaching it slowly, I narrowed my eyes at the contents on the table. It was disassembled body parts of a very old looking clone.
Wait a minute... This was the exact clone that came to retrieve the Field Tiller core on that day I'd first met Dottore. I remembered seeing these disconnected parts in the lab but he appeared to have moved them here.
Why would he lie about what this room held? Did he not want me to see his other clones?
The jumble of parts in front of me seemed to be the source of the noise but more specifically the head.
I tapped it cautiously and nearly jumped out of my skin when its eyes that were wide open and dull, flashed to meet my gaze. Can you imagine how terrifying it would be to see a detached robot head - which technically shouldn't be working - look at you like that? My heart was beating erratically as we stared at one another. It continued to click away.
Why did it sound so strange? The clicking seemed to be... Intentional. It felt like a message. A message... Could it be?
What had Scaramouche said?
"He's programmed his clone bodies to magnetise and attract his soul into their cores."
Was it possible that this was Dottore trying to enter this body? But then again, wouldn't he be trying to enter one of the newer models in those capsules? Or perhaps... He could only reach this one because it was out in the open and already used. The others didn't seem to be in working order.
Click. Pause. Click. Click. Pause. Click. Pause.
It was a sequence. It was a message. Dottore was trying to send a message. Could it be... Morse code?
For the first time in two months, I felt sure of this. And I felt something stir inside me at the new development. Hope mixed with a little anxiousness.
Scanning the desk, I searched for a piece of paper and pen. Immediately, I was scribbling down the sequence that clicked and paused over and over again.
After a while of listening to make sure I hadn't missed anything, the head seemed to slow down the whirring within it and soon the eyes rolled back to their original position, losing any light in them. The clicking came to a halt.
What did that mean? Was the connection lost? Was he unconscious? Why would it turn off? Unless maybe, the reason it had looked at me was to confirm I'd heard the message. Once it's job was done, it switched off as programmed. How long had it been ticking off for? Was Dottore still alive or was this preprogrammed from the moment he disappeared. It had been two months after all...
It didn't matter. My objective was to find him. Dead or alive. I'd give him a real funeral if he were dead but if he were alive, well I'd make him wish he were dead for everything he put me through. Right after apologising for our argument before everything went down in the arena, of course.
It still bugged me that I never got the chance to tell him that I didn't want us to be distant in that way. I only wanted us to be safe and finish the mission.
I left the lab swiftly and ran to the office where I could decipher the code. The remaining palace goers dodged out of the way as I hastily made my way up the stairs and around corners. This is the biggest lead I've gotten so far. It came directly from Dottore and that meant that he was definitely alive after the explosion. That was the only way the clone could have relayed this message. If he survived that, then he was likely still alive.
Once I was in my office, I tried to decode the clicks with morse code.
As the evening went by, my heart began to sink because all I came out with was a jumble of words. It was nonsense. Why would Dottore send something like this? At first I thought it might have been a pneumonic for something but that was a much too vast option to bargain with.
Stepping back from the piece of paper, I shut my eyes and racked my brain for anything. All I could think of was to count the number of clicks between each pause and write them down. I'd worked with only letters so far, perhaps it was numerical instead.
The result was a set of numbers separated by periods in between. The longer pauses I assumed were the gaps separating the numbers and soon everything fit into place. It was if I'd been slapped in the face with the answer.
Coordinates.
They were coordinates. Dottore had sent me a set of coordinates to a direct location. His location. My eyes were wide and my breathing picked up. Had I really just cracked it?
I could hardly stop myself from rushing to find a map of Teyvat and locating him when Scaramouche stormed in through the door ever so rudely.
"They said you were sprinting down hallways to get here. What did you find?" He seemed a little out of breath and suddenly it occurred to me that maybe he wanted to find Dottore as much as I did.
After grilling him for answers about his past and what Dottore had done to him, he told me how he was half a step away from being a God and Dottore had succeeded in unsealing the power that was shut away from him. Scaramouche tried to pretend as if he couldn't care less about Dottore, but it seemed to me as if he idolised him a little bit. I even noticed they had similar mannerisms. It gave me the impression that Scaramouche had picked them up from spending so much time in Dottore's lab.
"Next time, knock before you enter. And yes, I did find something. Coordinates. Sent directly by Dottore. He's alive and I know exactly where he is now," I said triumphantly. Behind the mask, I was grinning for the first time in two months. The smile was evident in my voice.
"What do you mean sent by him directly?" Scaramouche joined my side to study the map.
"It's hard to explain but he managed to relay it through one of his broken clones in the lab. I think they've done something to him that might have stopped him from being able to switch to another body. I mean, he would've been able to just ditch his old body if that wasn't the case," I explained.
Scaramouche nodded before tapping the point where the coordinates were pointing to. I glanced down, curious as to where they were holding him. Maybe it would give us an idea of who had taken him but what we saw was even stranger.
"That's the middle of the desert," I deadpanned.
"Uh, yes. It appears so," replied Scaramouche with confusion.
"I don't understand. How could he be there? The people I sent to search Sumeru had eyes everywhere. They would've seen him," I frowned. Suddenly an idea popped into my head. "Maybe... Maybe it's below the surface! Just like the underground city where the black market was. It would be the perfect hideout. Not to mention that Sumeru was filled to the brim with abandoned temples and ruins below ground. No wonder none of the spies could even catch a whiff of him!"
I was growing more excited by the second. He was in my reach. I was so close. Soon, I could be with him again.
But... We'd be back here. We'd be here answering to the Tsaritsa's every order. Whose to say history won't repeat itself? How many more times do I have to separated from him? If we returned here, then we'd only be forced further apart due to our work.
An idea sprang up in my head that might sort this issue but I pushed it to the back of my mind. One thing at a time Y/N. Let's find him first.
"So what do you want to do now?"
I smiled deviously. If anyone were to see the curve of madness on my face, they'd run in the opposite direction. Now that I had Dottore's location, I could do whatever I wanted with the people holding him hostage.
Whatever. I. Wanted.
A million ideas and plans and schemes formed in my brain. This was going to be exceptionally fun.
"General? Why do I feel tremendous blood lust coming from you?" Scaramouche took a step back.
"That is because many, many people are going to die soon," I sighed contently.
Stabbing a dagger into the area I'd be visiting in the near future, I stepped back with a murderous glare.
"Time to play hide and seek."
A/N
So, what do we think of Y/N's new scary personality? Personally, I think shes the baddest bitch thats ever lived. It only gets better from here people.
Y/N couldn't have been more right when she said many people are going to die soon.